First, making games isn’t a little quirky interest. Second, I don’t necessarily have to put it aside. My goal it to contribute to FAI. I will have to figure out the best way to do that. If I notice that whatever I try, I fail at because I can’t summon enough motivation, then may be making games is the best options I’ve got. But the point is that I have to maximize my contribution.
Why do you say it’s not a little quirky interest? I’m asking this as I’ve been fixated on various game-making stuff for close to 20 years now, but now feel like I’m mostly going on because it’s something I was really interested at 14 and subsequently tinkered with enough that it now seems like the thing I can do most interesting things with, but I suspect it’s not what I’d choose to have built a compulsive interest in if I could make the choice today.
Nowadays I am getting alienated from the overall gaming culture that’s still mostly optimized to primarily appeal to teenagers, and I often have trouble coming up with a justification why most games should be considered anything other than shiny escapist distractions and how the enterprise of game development aspires to anything other than being a pageant for coming up with the shiniest distraction. So I would go for both quirky, gaming has a bunch of weird insider culture things going for it, and little, most gaming and gamedev has little effect in the big picture of fixing things that make life bad for people (though distractions can be valuable too), and might have a negative effect if clever people who could make a contribution elsewhere get fixated into gamedev instead.
It does translate to a constantly growing programming skill for me, so at least there’s that good reason to keep up at it. But that’s more a side effect than a primary value of the interest.
You’ve committed mind projection fallacy. :) For me games have started out as a hobby and grew into a full blown passion. It’s something I live and breathe about 10 hours day (full time job and then making a game on the side).
I’ll agree that current games suck, but their focus has extended way past teenagers. And just because they are bad, doesn’t mean the medium is bad. It’s possible to make good games, for almost any definition of good.
I was describing my own mind, didn’t get around to projecting it yet.
Let me put the question this way: You can probably make a case for why people should want to be interested in, say, mathematics, physics or effective reasoning, even if they are not already interested in them. Is there any compelling similar reason why someone not already interested in game development should want to be interested in game development?
Sure, but it would be on case by case basis. I think game development is too narrow (especially when compared to things like math and physics), but if you consider game design in general, that’s a useful field to know any time you are trying to design an activity so that it’s engaging and understandable.
First, making games isn’t a little quirky interest. Second, I don’t necessarily have to put it aside. My goal it to contribute to FAI. I will have to figure out the best way to do that. If I notice that whatever I try, I fail at because I can’t summon enough motivation, then may be making games is the best options I’ve got. But the point is that I have to maximize my contribution.
Why do you say it’s not a little quirky interest? I’m asking this as I’ve been fixated on various game-making stuff for close to 20 years now, but now feel like I’m mostly going on because it’s something I was really interested at 14 and subsequently tinkered with enough that it now seems like the thing I can do most interesting things with, but I suspect it’s not what I’d choose to have built a compulsive interest in if I could make the choice today.
Nowadays I am getting alienated from the overall gaming culture that’s still mostly optimized to primarily appeal to teenagers, and I often have trouble coming up with a justification why most games should be considered anything other than shiny escapist distractions and how the enterprise of game development aspires to anything other than being a pageant for coming up with the shiniest distraction. So I would go for both quirky, gaming has a bunch of weird insider culture things going for it, and little, most gaming and gamedev has little effect in the big picture of fixing things that make life bad for people (though distractions can be valuable too), and might have a negative effect if clever people who could make a contribution elsewhere get fixated into gamedev instead.
It does translate to a constantly growing programming skill for me, so at least there’s that good reason to keep up at it. But that’s more a side effect than a primary value of the interest.
You’ve committed mind projection fallacy. :) For me games have started out as a hobby and grew into a full blown passion. It’s something I live and breathe about 10 hours day (full time job and then making a game on the side).
I’ll agree that current games suck, but their focus has extended way past teenagers. And just because they are bad, doesn’t mean the medium is bad. It’s possible to make good games, for almost any definition of good.
I was describing my own mind, didn’t get around to projecting it yet.
Let me put the question this way: You can probably make a case for why people should want to be interested in, say, mathematics, physics or effective reasoning, even if they are not already interested in them. Is there any compelling similar reason why someone not already interested in game development should want to be interested in game development?
Sure, but it would be on case by case basis. I think game development is too narrow (especially when compared to things like math and physics), but if you consider game design in general, that’s a useful field to know any time you are trying to design an activity so that it’s engaging and understandable.